American Engagement and the War Against Terror
"American Engagement and the War Against Terror"
by Richard A. Gephardt
Remarks As Prepared for Delivery
San Francisco Bar Association
Tuesday, July 22, 2003
"It's great to be here at the San Francisco Bar Association. And as a longtime member of the bar myself, I want to offer some solidarity at a time when — let's face it — there's a great deal of lawyer-bashing in our nation's capital.
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"George Bush has left us less safe and less secure than we were four years ago."
— Dick Gephardt
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"That's not my topic today, but I hope you'll remember something Senator Tom Harkin said when a doctor friend of his started criticizing lawyers. He said: 'Don't forget that when your predecessors were bleeding George Washington with leeches, our predecessors were writing the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.'
"As many of you know, it was here in San Francisco that the United Nations was founded six decades ago. At the dawning of our last great war, the Cold War, we had the courage and the foresight to engage the free countries of the world in an ageless struggle for liberty and democracy.
"Today, at the dawn of a new and unending war, the war on global terror, when global threats can be hidden in the most remote mountain ranges; when hostilities appear not as troops along a border, but as intercepted e-mails and satellite photos; when even our sometime adversaries hold intelligence that can help us capture the deadliest terrorists, we have to engage and embrace our allies and partners more, not less, than we have in the past.
"And so I'm here to talk about America's role in the world; about how crucial it is for our safety that we lead and engage the world toward freedom and not merely bully it to achieve narrow, short-term victories.
"I'm here as a supporter of the war in Iraq to tell you why President Bush's utter disregard for diplomacy and for America's credibility in the world has undermined even those who should be his staunch allies.
"I'm here to talk about why it's so destructive to American foreign policy to treat our own allies like so many flies on the American windshield when, in fact, we need their help to get where we're going.
"And I'm here to argue a case that will perhaps have special meaning for you as lawyers, as inheritors of that Constitution our predecessors drafted — that if American foreign policy is not a clear reflection of American values — if we don't honor and embrace the principles of democracy and self-determination as we battle tyranny and dictatorship — then we're just turning America into a global vigilante, cracking heads but unwilling to address the real causes of terror, of instability, of autocracy in the world.
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"Our gusher of oil-buying dollars is why Saudi Arabia has no incentive to reform its oppressive government and build a real civil society -- one that treats women as equals, not as ninth class citizens."
— Dick Gephardt
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"As you might imagine, I intend to be critical of the current administration on these matters. I know that's the last thing you expected to hear from a Democratic candidate for President of the United States. But let me begin by telling you where I agree with President Bush:
"The horrific acts of September 11th have heightened our purpose as a nation. More than ever, our fundamental safety cannot be taken for granted. More than ever, America must be the guardian of liberty and security for the world. Our strength must be unquestioned, our resolve unwavering. More than ever, the American president has a profound obligation to our people — to all people — to make our homes and our homeland safe and secure.
"It's a new world, with manifold new dangers — from global terror, to the recklessness of rogue dictators, to international crime and drug-running that rips at the very fabric of freedom.
"That is why, in the days and weeks after September 11th, I closed ranks and supported President Bush. I make no apologies for supporting the war in Iraq. And I still hope and pray for the president's success in world affairs. In a very real sense, the lives and livelihoods of our people are in his hands.
"But I'm running for president because I believe George Bush has left us less safe and less secure than we were four years ago. I'm calling for new national leadership because the Bush-Cheney bravado has left us isolated in the world — fracturing 50 years of alliances, calling into question our credibility, squandering the global goodwill that was showered on us after 9/11.
"I'm seeking the presidency because foreign policy isn't a John Wayne movie, where we catch the bad guys, hoist a few cold ones and then everything fades to black.
"Diplomacy matters. Burden-sharing matters. Follow-through matters. And yes, sustaining the peace is harder, more complex and often costlier than winning the war itself. No matter the surge of momentary machismo — as gratifying as it may be for some — it's short-sighted and wrong to simply go it alone.
"Now, there's a parody of Democratic foreign policy that's developed over the years — a partisan cartoon, if you will — and I think it's important to address it: It's that Democrats skimp on the military, don't care about a strong national defense and think everyone should just hold hands around a campfire. Well, I'm sick and tired of hearing it, because it was the Clinton-Gore military that defeated the Taliban after September 11th.
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"If he reall wanted to show us the state of affairs in Iraq, he should have landed on a patch of quicksand."
— Dick Gephardt
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"That's right — the same military that the Bush-Cheney crowd said had been 'gutted' and 'hollowed out' by a Democratic administration, allegedly brought to its lowest level of readiness since Pearl Harbor. Nearly a year before the first Bush-Cheney defense budget kicked in, that same Clinton-Gore military had beaten the Taliban in a matter of weeks.
"And if this administration listened to Democrats, who were urging more peacekeepers and better follow-through in Afghanistan, maybe elements of the Taliban wouldn't be regrouping this very minute.
"So, let's bury the partisan parody once and for all. As president, I'll begin and end with an unshakeable commitment to keep our defenses strong. It's no accident that our troops — the finest in the very history of conflict — performed so bravely and admirably, with so few casualties, during the three-week war against Iraq.
"I'll make sure our armed forces remain the best-equipped, best-trained, best-led fighting force in the entire world. And I'll never settle for a quick psychic victory. I'll never lead this nation into war without a serious, candid assessment of the risks and costs — and a commitment to see it all the way through.
"America must stand against dictators and those who harbor and support terrorism. That's why I stood with this administration's efforts to dismantle the Taliban in Afghanistan. And that's why I stood with this administration's efforts to disarm Saddam Hussein. I believed then, and I believe now: either Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or components of weapons of mass destruction.
"Either way, he was in clear violation of more than a dozen U.N. Security Council Resolutions — from 686 in 1991 to 1441 last year — resolutions we passed because the whole world knew Saddam was a threat unless he was disarmed. But while I strongly supported those efforts, I personally urged the president — in at least three separate meetings — to go to the United Nations and bring the world community on-board.
"In fact, I crafted the resolution that helped lead the president to make his case at the U.N., when he eventually did so. That resolution also demanded that the president not undermine our broader efforts against terrorism in his zeal to act against Iraq. It urged the president to work with Congress and with the world on a real plan to stabilize and rebuild post-war Iraq, so our troops wouldn't have to spend the next 50 years dodging bullets there.
"President Bush chose to ignore these steps. And I believe that's why his Iraq policy is foundering today. We were right to prevent the day when Saddam Hussein could threaten his adversaries with nuclear or biological weapons. But we were wrong to short-circuit the world community, to effectively shut them out when they felt we hadn't made the case.
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"It's as if the Bush-Cheney crowd never met an ally they didn't want to turn into an adversary."
— Dick Gephardt
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"I know this sound like an abstract, academic argument. I know it sounds like one side is talking about good and evil, while the other is wringing its hands over process and paperwork.
"So I ask you — in an age of errant dictators and global pandemics and tribal genocides and international crime and drugs, don't you think one or two of these problems might require the help of another country sooner or later? Don't you think it cheapens the post-war alliance, built on shared values of liberty and open economies, when we just buy votes at the U.N. from developing countries, like some kind of global Tammany Hall, every time we have a resolution to pass?
"There's a dangerous pattern here: withdrawing from the ABM Treaty over the opposition of most American allies; withdrawing from the Kyoto Global Warming Treaty already agreed to by 178 other countries; undermining the International Criminal Court, turning our backs on the international laws and institutions we ourselves labored to create — and not for the sake of global charity, but for our own safety, for our own security.
"For two decades, under Presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton, our approach was, 'multilateral if we can, unilateral if we must.' In this administration, it's 'unilateral all the time, multilateral if the rest of the world wants to tag along.' It's as if the Bush-Cheney crowd never met an ally they didn't want to turn into an adversary.
"And if there were ever an argument against this kind of chest-beating unilateralism, we find it in post-war Iraq right now, where we expected to find a standing army and police force, but found neither. Where thousands of convicted criminals and murderers have been freed from looted and crumbling prisons, and there's nowhere to put them even if we could catch them. Where we're still struggling to devise a plan to transfer political authority to the Iraqi people and have only the shakiest plan to find and secure weapons of mass destruction.
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"I'm seeking the presidency because foreign policy isn't a John Wayne movie, where we catch the bad guys, hoist a few cold ones and then everything fades to black."
— Dick Gephardt
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"Of course we didn't need allies to win the war against Iraq. We need allies to sustain that victory. Without them, should we be surprised that it's mainly American soldiers who are suffering daily assaults and ambushes in the sands of Iraq? Should we be astonished that, rather than quickly establishing a model democracy in the Middle East, the Bush administration is struggling just to prevent chaos and bloodshed?
"And is it really acceptable that America's Secretary of Defense admitted he didn't even know if we'd asked our allies for help with the peacekeeping? That he was so indifferent to the notion of diplomacy, so unfazed by his admission that we may need to increase our own troop presence that he didn't even bother to check? Even the Secretary-General of NATO — the military alliance we essentially run — says he has not been asked to consider a formal NATO role in post-war Iraq.
"If I were president, I'd ask NATO to join with us immediately to secure peace and stability in post-war Iraq. And I'd go the U.N. right now and ask for a Security Council mandate, so countries like India and Russia and France and Germany will join us.
"According to news reports, some in this administration are pressing right now for the president to go back to the U.N. to finally get a real U.N. mandate, but others believe it would be 'humiliating.' I'll tell you what's humiliating — putting American lives on the line without the help and support and additional troops we need to do the job right.
"Even in the best scenario, it's going to be a long and arduous road to Iraqi democracy — a phrase that, historically speaking, has been a contradiction in terms. We've got 147,000 Americans there now; we're spending $4 billion a month in Iraq; it's not mere machismo to resist asking allies for help — it's absolute insanity.
"Meanwhile, there's one alliance these days that's far too cozy: the Bush-Cheney administration remains shackled to Saudi oil producers. That's why this administration tolerated Saudi silence when we struck back against the Taliban. It's why this administration never spoke out about the clear evidence that Saudi citizens were funding Al Qaeda. And our gusher of oil-buying dollars is why Saudi Arabia has no incentive to reform its oppressive government and build a real civil society — one that treats women as equals, not as ninth-class citizens.
"Here's the Bush-Cheney policy: independence from just about anyone who can help us stabilize the Middle East; total dependence on the very source of the problem. It's sheer lunacy, and it's why I've proposed an aggressive plan to achieve total energy independence within 20 years. This administration needs to stop behaving like the United States of Saudi Arabia and it needs to start mobilizing international pressure to get Saudi Arabia to stop funding, training and breeding global terror in the first place. How much more chaos in the Gulf will it take for the president to get the message?
"I submit to you today: we won the war in Iraq, but we're in serious danger of losing the peace. President Bush may have won the support of a lot of Democrats — including me — for his war effort there, but in his dissembling and mishandling, he's steadily losing every ounce of bipartisan support he once had.
"When President Bush landed on an aircraft carrier and declared victory in Iraq, I think he chose the wrong back-drop for his photo-op. If you ask me, if he really wanted to show us the state of affairs in Iraq, he should have landed on a patch of quicksand.
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"Nor does it matter, in the administration's constant refrain, that it was just '16 words.' Let's be clear -- the Republicans leveled articles of impeachment for a smaller number."
— Dick Gephardt
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"It was never going to be easy. But now, with scant planning — even after all we learned in Kosovo, in Bosnia and in Afghanistan — with almost no burden-sharing, with a so-called 'coalition of the willing' that was recruited like the crew of a pirate ship. This looming quagmire is on our shoulders alone. If you ask me, that's a failure of diplomacy, of foreign policy, of plain old American leadership — and of the Bush-Cheney insistence on shutting out the world.
"There's another reason we're losing the peace, and it's a reason that's been getting quite a bit of public attention lately. I'm talking about a growing credibility gap. It is now crystal clear that the President of the United States made a claim in his State of the Union address — a claim which was a major part of his justification for invading Iraq — that was widely known within his own administration to be untrue.
"It's one thing to say your tax plan would 'reduce tax rates for everyone who pays income tax' — when in fact 8.1 million taxpayers would receive no tax cuts. It's one thing to say you want to leave no child behind and then cut your own education bill.
"We're talking about a president's justification, in a constitutionally-mandated message to Congress for sending flesh-and-blood Americans to war. Nor does it matter, in the administration's constant refrain, that it was just '16 words.' Let's be clear — the Republicans leveled articles of impeachment for a far smaller number.
"Last week, all of political Washington was consumed by a peculiar parlor game: figuring out which mid-level administration official did or didn't stand up to some other mid-level official.
"Well as the columnist Michael Kinsley put it last week, asking the question 'who lied in President Bush's State of the Union address' is a lot like asking the question, 'who's buried in Grant's tomb?'
"It doesn't matter that George Tenet's taken the blame. My fellow Missourian Harry Truman had a sign on his desk that said 'the buck stops here.' It's high time that President Bush — the man who campaigned for a 'responsibility era' — got that sign back from Langley, Virginia and started taking responsibility — stopping the buck on his own desk for a change.
"Again, I supported the war on Iraq. There was a case to be made, above and beyond any uranium purchases from Niger. That's not the issue here. The American president must never commit American troops on the basis of half-truths, of White House briefing-room spin, of carefully-parsed and cleverly-tailored claims. That denigrates every just cause for which the president and I have fought.
"In an era when our gravest security threats are covert, when troops must be committed on the basis of scraps of intelligence, not flag-waving invasions from overseas — how can we compromise the integrity of our word?
"We're facing serious crises with North Korea and Iran. If we want other nations to go along with us for what could be very difficult measures, how can we accept anything less than absolute, forthright honesty from our president?
"We can't, and that's why we need a full investigation of this misinformation campaign. Short of that, how can we ever expect our allies to follow us into battle? How can we ever expect our fighting men and women to put themselves in harm's way?
"The American people understand the fragility of this new world. I believe they're willing to make sacrifices, even leaps of faith, when they feel the case is urgent. But you have to tell them the truth. You have to respect them enough to lay the facts on the table and be candid when the facts aren't all there.
"It concerns me — and it should concern all Americans — because we've been down this road before. How can we claim to be defending democracy abroad, even as our administration denies a full and straightforward public debate about the war in Iraq?
"Never mind how it will affect their next tax cut plan; never mind how it will hurt the president's poll ratings. President Bush has to do what he has simply not yet done, since the start of this war — come clean about the real costs and consequences. Level with the American people about precisely what we're doing and how long we expect to be doing it.
"This is the problem with the Bush-Cheney policy known as 'pre-emption.' When it is up to them, and them alone, to decide what will constitute a threat even five, 10 years from now; when they don't even recognize the value of consensus among like-minded nations, it is an invitation to abuse, to use sketchy evidence, to an arrogance of power that's at odds with the 'humility' President Bush promised us in foreign affairs.
"We have to renew our commitment to America's global leadership, which demands both credibility and collaboration, or we're not going to succeed. As president, I'll lead by building consensus with other nations, not by draining it away. If that means I'll have a harder case to make, that's a burden I willingly accept.
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"My fellow Missourian Harry Truman had a sign on his desk that said 'the buck stops here.' It's high time that President Bush... got that sign back... and started taking responsibility."
— Dick Gephardt
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"Rather than unilaterally 'pre-empting' threats from arriving on our shores, I'll lead an administration and an alliance that will work to prevent threats from emerging in the first place by securing nuclear materials and facilities worldwide, as we began to do in post-Cold War Russia — a far cry from this administration's approach to North Korea. By working with other nations on a regime of export and border controls, so dangerous materials can't proliferate from weak or rogue states; by cracking down on the very breeding grounds of terror, the places where it's funded and sustained, where impressionable young people are raised and educated and prepared for it.
"By improving our intelligence capabilities, and by relying on honest assessments of our intelligence, rather than fitting the facts to the case — so the whole world can rely upon and act upon American claims.
"And I will work with our allies to promote the emergence of strong, stable democracies in post-conflict or failing states, where weak governance, poverty, and inequality — especially of women — have allowed conflict and terror to take root.
"I'm not saying that America shouldn't act in its own interests, or that there won't ever be situations where we'll have to go it alone. But if we rebuild the trust of our allies; if we prove that we have the means and the methods not just to invade rogue states, but make them peaceful, thriving democracies; if we insist on the highest standard of intelligence, and the full use of diplomatic means before taking up arms then we'll have the free world behind us, sharing the burdens and the costs, even if they occasionally disagree.
"You see, I love America, and I love it not merely for the strength of our arms, but for the strength of our ideals. We need the strongest, best-prepared military in human history not for its own sake; not for the global equivalent of a schoolyard taunt, but to uphold liberty and self-determination, to defend the freedoms that are the fullest expression of the human spirit.
"Foreign policy isn't always simple. Even when we know we're right, it's worth taking the time to bring the world on-board, as the first President Bush did so expertly in the first Gulf War. It's worth measuring our own conduct by the very democratic values we espouse.
"As president, I promise an unrelenting assault on terror and on those who fund and harbor it. But I won't just strike terror camps and hope future terrorists are too scared to follow. I'll work to model freedom for all people everywhere, so we build a true coalition, based on our shared interests and values.
"I'll work to end the ignorance and indigence and fear that makes people turn toward terror in the first place. In this globally interdependent age, the world is getting smaller every day. The world's problems spill across borders, and the world's bounty does as well.
"Here in San Francisco, the birthplace of the United Nations, the incubator of internationalism, let us pledge to sustain the world community on which we so greatly depend; let us draw strength from our allies and not just their ire. Let us rededicate ourselves to a world where America embodies the might, and grace, and leadership bestowed upon us — or the safety and security of peoples everywhere.
"Thank you for listening. May God bless you and may God shine on these United States of America."
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